User reviews

A beautiful, delicate intimate look at a family going through a crisis but remaining strong and focused. Sensitive, observational and realistic performances create a sense of a bittersweet irresistible home. Definitely a promising new filmmaker.

A father, his teenage daughter and his young son move into the home of his father, a sick old man, to spend the summer with him. Although one of the reasons would be to care for the elderly, the truth is also that the father's economic situation is precarious (he sells shoes on the street) and he can no longer afford a home. Then the father's sister is added to the family group, an aunt with a very good relationship with her nephews and with a marital crisis.

With the original title of something like Brothers on a Midsummer Night, in this her debut feature the Korean director Yoon Dan-bi portrays the daily life of this temporarily assembled family, which faces as best it can, with a spirit between resigned (and between depressive and rebellious in the case of the adolescent daughter) a future that is certainly financially and emotionally uncertain, with an absence of the children's mother who is making herself felt. The director shows love for her creatures, but the extreme naturalism of the film, which abounds in scenes that do not contribute to the development of a dramatic progression (a progression that the director surely did not intend either) and the almost immediate muffling and deactivation of situations conflict personally plunged me several times into absolute boredom. And that important things happen in the movie...

This film won the Special Jury Prize of the 35th Mar del Plata International Film Festival